Blend

Blend was a live painting event held at Taste (717 West Smith Street in College Park). Frankie Messina and Tracy Burke helped organize this unique collaborative event. Blend bought together artists from a wide variety of disciplines and had them all work on a series of canvases together. When I arrived with Terry, we made our way back to the red room where the lights were blazing and we could hear the conversations of all the artists at work. Jeremy Seghers and Amanda Chadwick were in the restaurant and I suggested Terry join them as I finished up a sketch. Plastic was draped over the walls and floor to avoid paint getting everywhere. Even with these precautions, someone stepped on a palette and stomped red paint everywhere. The mess was quickly cleaned up. The art styles were varied and in some ways disjointed when placed side by side on a single canvas. It took some time and effort to see some of the canvases find a unified vision. A man wearing a Viking helmet had horns which had diodes inside that would light up and move up and down to the beat of the music. After the event, I learned that the artist in the foreground of the sketch is Maisy May Marrs. She did a fun quirky painting of a serious redheaded girl in the cornet of the canvas she was working on. She stares up at a stick figure girl on top of her head. the image is strangely unsettling.
Since I hadn’t been invited to join the effort, I just concentrated on my sketch. I later found out that both Terry and Amanda had contributed to a piece so I suppose I should have made a contribution. Louise Bova whose work is expressionistic and representational, decided to just add swirling brush strokes which added to the pattern of a painting. Once I finished my sketch I joined Jeremy Amanda and Terry out in the restaurant. I ordered some tater tots and a drink. The dinner conversation was lively and well greased with some drinks. Jeremy and Amanda had to get to an 11 o’clock SAK comedy club show so they took off. Terry and I stayed behind and waited for the band to start playing in the red room as many of the artists packed up and left.

Oscar Party

Matt McGrath put out an invite on Facebook for his annual Oscar Party and my wife Terry wanted to go. Matt is the producer of Project F which is a theater production that I pan to follow closely. I had attended Holi Fest earlier in the day and I was covered with brightly colored chalks. I didn’t have time to go home and change, so I just shook out my jacket, and wiped as much color off from my face and neck as I could. I went to the Viet Garden for dinner just before going to Matt’s and I had my favorite dish Pad Tai and a beer.
When I parked outsides his place I could see that he was rushing around the living room cleaning up. I realized I was probably the first to arrive. The walkway up to the front door was decorated with a red carpet of sorts. It was held in place however with gray duck tape which kind of threw off any hint elegance. A strobe light kept blinking which Matt later explained simulated flash bulbs going off. The door had a large silhouette of a golden statue.
I was indeed the first to arrive, but Matt was gracious and offered me a beer and I sat at his bar in the back patio. Later a friend referred to the space as “Matt’s Man Patio.” Besides the bar with it’s fully functional tap of Guinness, there was a stripper pole and a pair of animating breasts on a plaque. He also had one of those bar trivia games and I tried playing a game where you had to find 5 differences between two photos. I lost every time. There were four red sheets covering some of the screened windows and each had a golden statue in the center. Bright gold streamers divided the window decorations. All of the food for the party was named after Oscar nominated films, the most obvious being a stack of 7 UP cans for the movie UP.
Slowly Matt’s friends arrived and surrounded the bar. We all started filling out our pics for the winning categories. I started feeling sure of myself, but halfway through the list, I was filling out answers by guessing, since I hadn’t seen enough of the films to make an educated guess. Most of the people at the party were actors and actresses and there was plenty of catty remarks about the gowns being worn in Hollywood that night. A few people came to Matt’s party dressed to the nines as well. I was dressed in my Sunday best but I had been covered with chalks at Holi fest that morning and I didn’t get all the chalk off. Louise Bova had a friend visiting her from Brooklyn and she called me on my cell and asked if I knew of any good Oscar parties. I talked to Matt and we invited her and her friend over. My wife dressed up as Nora Desmond with an antique hat she had just bought at the Mount Dora Antiques fair. She had long black gloves and plenty of sequins. If there had been a prize for best costume she would have won.
I was drinking Guinness all night, but I still got cold outside and eventually moved into the living room. In the living room my ears started getting warm perhaps from the drink so I bounced back outside. Matt’s big screen TV outside had the ability to freeze and even rewind. When I went out there I saw the same category being awarded that I had just witnessed in the living room. I debated about shouting out the winner, but held my tongue.
At the end of the night as we tabulated the results of everyone’s Oscar ballots, I discovered that I only got 6 out of 47 categories right. This was a sad showing indeed. Next year I plan to study up. The winner got 13 categories right and left with a gift bag of trinkets. As he said, “Its not what you win that matters, it the winning that counts.” He was sitting right next to me when we filled out out forms, I should have cheated.

ZOOm Air Adventures

03-07-10ZipLines
As I was sketching at the Lazy Gator bar, Dina Peterson told me about the Sanford Zoo which as a Zip line course set up. I had seen the course set up a few months ago when I went to the zoo for a party hosted by one of Terry’s clients. I realized that this was something I should sketch and possibly experience. Dina and a group of friend were going to do the course Saturday or Sunday and I figured I should sketch before they all showed up. I went to the zoo two hours early to give myself a chance to get a sketch under my belt before people arrived. It was a beautiful day and I walked the course for a while trying to decide where to look. People were in constant motion as they progressed over the ropes wires and suspended logs. I finally set my chair down and leaned back against a tree and got started. Where I was seated, people would actually tight wire walk right above me. One young boy shouted out, “Hey look I am over the artist.” I shouted up, “Don’t fall now.”
A children’s birthday party was going on at a picnic table behind me. Ten year old boys chased each other around. One boy stopped right in front of me and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was sketching and he pointed at the page and said, “you drew that?” I pointed up to the platforms in the tree and than he looked up and back at the page again then ran off.
A woman and her husband were struggling to get across the wire line above me. He went first and she followed. She started shouting out, “Stop shaking the wire you are going to make me fall. That isn’t funny.” He said, “I’m just heavy, I can’t help it.” She shouted back, “I’ll shake the f*#^%* wire when you are over the pavement then we will see how funny this is!” She wasn’t a happy camper.
The course takes quite some time to complete. People who were just starting the course when I started sketching were not back on the ground until several hours later. I am betting that this is a good work out. An older husband and wife team came up to me after they had finished. She said, “I kind of wish I had worn hiking boots or shoes with a real solid soul. It was a real challenge at first, but after a while you get over the fear and it is fun.”
The friends I was waiting for never showed up, I must have heard the date wrong. But I got a decent sketch so I returned home satisfied. Who knows someday I might find myself in the treetops.